TRC Final Report

Volume 6

Section 5

Chapter 1

Subsection 2

Abductions

8. This term was defined as the ‘forcible and illegal removal or capturing of a person’. It was applied to those cases where people had ‘disappeared’ after having last been seen in the custody of the police or of other persons who were using force. It does not include those who were arrested or detained in terms of accepted human rights standards.

Severe ill-treatment

9. This term was defined by the Commission as:

acts or omissions that deliberately and directly inflict severe mental or physical suffering on a victim, taking into account the context and nature of the victim.

10. The Commission took a number of factors into account when determining on a case-by-case basis whether an act qualified as severe ill-treatment. These included the duration of the suffering or hardship, its physical or mental effects and the age, strength and state of health of the victim. Violations included rape, sexual abuse, severe assault, harassment, solitary confinement, detention without trial, arson and displacement. A fuller list of acts that constituted violations is included in the Commission’s Final Report.⁶

ESTABLISHING ACCOUNTABILITY

11. One of the main objectives of the Commission was to establish the identity of the individuals, authorities, institutions and organisations involved in the commission of gross violations of human rights. The Commission was also tasked with establishing accountability for the violations, and determining the role played by those who were involved in the conflicts of the past. In dealing with these complex issues, the Commission was guided by the provisions of section 4 of its enabling Act.

12. The Commission made findings of accountability in respect of the various role players in the conflict on the basis of the evidence it received. It should be noted that it did this in its capacity as a commission of inquiry and not as a court of law. The Commission’s findings are, therefore, made on the basis of probabilities and should not be interpreted as judicial findings of guilt, but rather as findings of accountability within the context of the Act.

13. The Commission based its conclusions on the evidence and submissions placed before it. It did not focus only on legal and political accountability, but also on establishing moral responsibility.

Moral re sponsibility

14. In its Final Report, the Commission stated:⁷

A responsible society is committed to the affirmation of human rights and, to addressing the consequences of past violations) which presupposes the acceptance of individual responsibility by all those who supported the system of apartheid or simply allowed it to continue to function and those who did not oppose violations during the political conflicts of the past.

15. In the Final Report, the Commission defines not only legal and political accountability, but also boldly asserts the notion of moral responsibility. The Commission finds that all South Africans are required to examine their own conduct in upholding and supporting the apartheid system. The abdication of responsibility, the unquestioning obeying of commands, submitting to fear of punishment, moral indifference, the closing of one’s eyes to events or permitting oneself to be intoxicated, seduced or bought with personal advantages are all part of the multilayered spiral of responsibility that lays the path for the large scale and systematic human rights violations committed in modern states.

16. There were those who were responsible for creating and maintaining the brutal system of apartheid; those who supported this brutal system and benefited from it, and those who benefited from the system simply by being born white and enjoying the privileges that flowed from that. Others occupied positions of power and status and enjoyed great influence in the apartheid system, even though they had no direct control over the security establishment and were not directly responsible for the commission of gross human rights violations. It is only by acknowledging this benefit and accepting this moral responsibility that a new South African society can be built. What is required is a moral and spiritual renaissance capable of transforming moral indifference, denial, paralysing guilt and unacknowledged shame into personal and social responsibility. This acceptance of moral responsibility will allow all those who benefited fro m apartheid – including the business community and ordinary South Africans – to share in the commitment of ensuring that it never happens again.

17 . Those who must come under special scrutiny are those who held high office, those who occupied positions of executive authority and those cabinet ministers whose portfolios did not place them in a direct supervisory capacity over the security forces. While the Commission’s findings are not judicial findings, the Commission finds them to be morally and politically responsible for the gross human rights violations committed under the apartheid system, given: a the specific responsibilities of cabinet ministers who oversaw aspects of the apartheid structure in areas that formed key aspects of apartheid’s inhumane social fabric (education, land removals, job reservation, the creation of the Bantustans, for example); b the knowledge they had (given the extensive information regarding apartheid crimes in the public domain), or the knowledge that they are p resumed to have had, given their access to classified information – at the highest level – about gross violations of human rights, and c their power to act, given their official leadership positions.